Are America's Generals Becoming Morally Bankrupt?

From left to right, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III; Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mark E. Ferguson; Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter; Robert F. Hale, the Defense Department's comptroller; Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno; Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James F. Amos; and National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Frank J. Grass testify on sequestration before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, D.C., Feb. 12, 2013. DOD photo by D. Myles Cullen

A Stampede Of Hysterics -- Winslow Wheeler, Foreign Policy

America's generals are just as morally bankrupt as Congress.

I read two critically important reports this week on the impact that sequestration would have on national defense. That possible reduction in military spending -- $48 billion, or 7.4 percent of the $645 billion currently appropriated for fiscal year 2013 -- is being characterized by the stampede of hysterics who run the Pentagon as the virtual end of national security as we know it. What these two reports show is that we should now consider the Pentagon as morally and mentally broken as Congress.

The first report, by Chuck Spinney, who spent a few decades inside the Department of Defense evaluating budgets, weapons, and bureaucratic behavior, was published at Counterpunch and Time's Battleland blog. The second was a Congressional Research Service report by Amy Belasco, who has spent the last few decades at CRS and the Congressional Budget Office parsing defense budgets and their implications.

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My Comment: To be compared to Congress is not the situation that you want to be in. But while the U.S. military still enjoys the support of the mass majority of Americans .... this has definitely not been a good year for America's top Generals. Scandal, sexual misconduct, and now the budget battles .... all of these issues are now starting to make people question (this blogger included) on what is exactly happening in the Pentagon today. And .... it pains me to say this ..... what we are finding is a leadership that is coming up short.